Social Issues

Reporters love to cross-examine Republicans about social issues and their supposedly “extreme” positions. Of course, they never challenge Democrats on the positions that really are extreme–e.g., advocating the sale of aborted babies’ body parts. Republicans need to push back against these transparent attempts not only to make Republicans look bad, but equally important, to change the subject away from $18 trillion in debt, a collapsing foreign policy, runaway illegal immigration, »

As you undoubtedly know, a group called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) has made a series of undercover videos of high-ranking Planned Parenthood officials. So far, two videos have been released. In both, representatives of CMP are negotiating to buy fetal tissue in the form of intact organs from Planned Parenthood. The videos have caused a firestorm of controversy. Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing and has denounced CMP »

Two hundred twenty-four years after the Constitution was ratified, Anthony Kennedy and four loyal Democrats have discovered, hidden somewhere in its provisions, a right to gay marriage. This so-called right, deemed “fundamental” by the five-justice majority, was undreamed of until a few years ago. If you want to read the decision, it is here. Yesterday’s Obamacare decision told us that we do not live under the rule of law. Today’s »

These are trying times for Democrats. They control neither the Senate nor the House, and fare even worse at the state and local levels. The economy, after six plus years of the Obama presidency, is so-so. President Obama’s foreign policy has produced setback after serious setback. To make matters worse, the Democrats are almost certain to nominate for president the co-architect of Obama’s failed foreign policy. And Hillary Clinton’s campaign »

Does it seem like we’re re-running the 1960s, with rolling riots and liberals talking about “root causes” again? Bill DeBlasio is playing the John Lindsay role in New York quite ably, and Baltimore mayor Rawlings-Blake offered a decent reprise of Hubert Humphrey’s infamous remark that if he’d been born in a ghetto, he might start a riot too. How long until the New York Review of Books runs a diagram »

On April 20, two gay men hosted a dinner for Ted Cruz in their Manhattan apartment. Presumably they are conservatives who favor sane fiscal policies, and so on. But when the New York Times reported that they had introduced some of their friends to Senator Cruz, the wrath of the gay thought police descended on them. The Times reports the sequel: Ian Reisner, one of the two gay hoteliers facing »

Utopiastic liberal enclaves (usually college towns like Boulder, Berkeley, Cambridge, etc.) pride themselves on their enlightened caring and sharing mentality, their generosity toward the oppressed and underprivileged, etc. The residents are always happily smug about their moral superiority to the grasping, bourgeois middle classes of suburbia. But I couldn’t help notice during my year as an inmate at Boulder that everyone had a really beefy lock for their bicycles. Apparently »

Tim Cook, Steve Jobs’s successor as CEO of Apple, authored an op-ed in the Washington Post condemning laws that protect religious freedom. Cook, who is himself gay, concluded with these words: Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous. We agree with that, and we would like to see Apple show some courage. Not »

The whole Indiana RFRA controversy prompts a few interrogatories. Such as: • If a member of the Westboro Baptist Church asks for a bakery to create a cake with their motto “God hates fags,” will the baker be charged with discrimination if she refuses? • If a baker agrees to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but as matter of practice includes the slogan “God hates fags” in, say, »

In his excellent post about the “insane” reaction to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), John argues that the brouhaha is entirely political. Liberals, John says, “have decided that the social issues are winners for them, and one suspects that they are desperate to distract attention from the Obama administration’s economic and foreign policy failures, Hillary Clinton’s prevarications, and so on.” John may well be right. However, polling strongly suggests »

Other than a brief discussion here, we haven’t written about the firestorm over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Yesterday Minnesota’s governor, Mark Dayton, joined the chorus of denunciation: “‘I abhor the actions taken by the Legislature and governor of Indiana,’ Dayton told the Star Tribune.” Dayton, like a number of other governors, says he is considering a ban on official travel to Indiana. So Minnesota’s bureaucrats may no longer be »

Yesterday the NCAA announced that it is deeply concerned about Indiana’s just-passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and intends to scrutinize Indiana carefully to determine whether the state is fit to host events like the Final Four, scheduled to take place in Indianapolis next week: The NCAA national office and our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this »

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of orders, including a long list of cases in which certiorari was denied. This means that the Court will not hear those cases, and the rulings from the courts of appeal will stand. Among the cases the Court declined to hear were those from three circuits that have found a constitutional right to gay marriage. This means that gay marriage will »

President Obama has announced another of his useless initiatives, the only purpose of which is to distract attention from the comprehensive failures of his administration. This one is intended to reduce sexual assault on college campuses. It is claimed that one in five women on college campuses is sexually assaulted–an absurd statistic if by “sexually assaulted” you mean sexually assaulted. Nevertheless, interested persons (politicians who want to talk about something »

Sports may or may not breed discipline, but these days they certainly breed disciplinarians, too many of whom wear suits and sit behind desks. Three new developments remind us of this. The first development is a good one. The NCAA has announced that it will lift sanctions against Penn State. It imposed the sanctions in the aftermath of revelations that former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky molested children »

Why not? It seems to be all that anyone is talking about. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have weighed in, along with every sports columnist, talk show host and water cooler pundit in the country. So I might as well give it a go. Here are my opinions on the Ray Rice flap, in no particular order. Feel free to correct me in the comments. 1) I hate these ritual »

Planned Parenthood has subsisted on government grants and misguided private largesse for too long. It has sunk to an ACORN-like level of corruption. But this is the last straw: a Planned Parenthood staffer in Portland instructs a 15-year-old girl in the niceties of bondage, and worse. You have to see it to believe it: This is actually one of several such Planned Parenthood videos. Is bondage advice part of PP’s »